The Simbul's Gift

1

The village of Sulalk, in Aglarond Eight days after Greengrass, The Year of the Staff (1366DR)

It was a warm spring morning. Trees were cloaked in flowers. The grass had greened with the promise of rich forage for the mothers of the lambs, calves, and colts born each night in farmyard birthing sheds.

Bro wanted to stretch out on the ground and nap until noon. No matter how beautiful the days, it was the nature of babies to be born at night, and it was the duty of farmers and farmer's stepsons to sit in the birthing shed. Bro had been vigilant for six nights' running, through a steady stream of births, all but one of which had been successful.

A good spring, so far, with good trade even for the stillborn lamb whose tender hide would make a fine pair of gloves for some lady in the royal city, Velprintalar. Dyed and embellished with jewels and silks, the lamb's hide might find its way onto the queen's hands, though thoughts of Aglarond's mighty Simbul fled Bro's mind as fast as they occurred. In Sulalk, on the Yuirwood's verge, Aglarond's seacoast capital was a world, not a week, away.

Adentir, Bro's human stepfather, paid the queen's tithes and abided by her laws, which were, fortunately, rooted in common sense and easily obeyed. Dent raised a glass in the queen's name at festival times and never mentioned her otherwise. For Bro, who'd lived his first twelve years among his own kind, the Cha'Tel'Quessir half-elves of the Yuirwood, the Simbul was the living emblem of an uneasy truce between them and the world outside-the world in which Bro had lived since his father's death.

A hand touched Bro's shoulder. With it came the scents of pine bark and moss that were Shali, his mother, and the Yuirwood. But the forest was memory and the bowl she offered was filled with whey-soaked grain.

"Hungry, Ember?"

She called him by his boyhood name. Everyone else called him Bro, a crude shortening of Ebroin because, deep in their guts, humans remained averse to Cha'Tel'Quessir names and, in his own soul, Bro knew he hadn't yet made Ebroin his own true name.

More tired than hungry, Bro set aside the collection of half-braided thongs that would, when he was clearheaded, become a halter for a newborn foal. He accepted the bowl.

"Maybe tonight." Shali ran a hand through his hair, leaving his ears exposed to the sunlight.

"Maybe." Bro tossed his head, returning his hair to its customary ears-and-face-hiding disorder.

He watched his mother flinch and felt shame. Half-elves weren't a race like their elf or human forebearers. First-generation half-elves took after their elven and human parents equally, but among the Cha'Tel'Quessir, family resemblance was a chancy thing. It wasn't Shali's fault that her skin was human-fair and her ears were small and rounded while he was forest-shadowed to the tips of his very elven ears. No more than it had been her fault that Rizcarn had broken his neck falling out of a tree he'd climbed a thousand times. Shali had loved Rizcarn in a way Bro couldn't begin to imagine; she'd left the Yuirwood because she couldn't bear her memories and couldn't die, either-because she had a son she'd had to finish raising.

In the five years since Rizcarn's death, Shali had become a stranger dressed in layers of woven cloth, a kerchief bound over hair and ears alike. She'd never go back to the trees; they both knew that, just as they both knew he would. The knowledge ached between them.

"Adentir says the foal will be yours, if it's a colt." Shali gave a brittle laugh. The Cha'Tel'Quessir weren't horse-folk. A colt wouldn't keep Bro out of the Yuirwood.

"I'll hold him to his word," Bro replied.

She smiled a thin-lipped half-smile, the only smile Bro saw anymore.

"He's not bad," Bro said awkwardly, speaking words that were, and were not, the truth.

Adentir was human. Everyone in Sulalk was human, except for Bro and Shali. Even Tay-Fay, his half-sister, was human. That was the way of things for the Cha'Tel'Quessir: If a half-elf mated with an elf or human, their children belonged to the full-blooded world. The Cha'Tel'Quessir way of life could vanish in a generation.

Bro didn't blame his stepfather. Human ways were ideal for humans, elf ways were ideal for elves, but Cha'Tel'Quessir had to resist both, if they valued themselves.

"He's been good to me, Ember. He understands. Rizcarn-"

Bro gagged down another spoonful of the cold porridge. He hated it when his mother talked about his father, expecting him to take Rizcarn's part. He'd loved his father, missed him and mourned him, but when push came to shove, he couldn't-didn't want to-replace Rizcarn.

"Dent says it'll take two years at least to train a colt," he muttered. "Says we'll do it together. Says he'll show me how it's done. He's got good hands-" he paused, leaving the words, for a human, unsaid.

"A tree doesn't grow until a seed's been planted, Ember. A lot can happen in two years." Shali tucked Bro's hair behind his ears again. "If it's a colt."

And if the mare foaled a filly, instead? Bro closed his eyes. A lot would happen in two years, no matter what happened after they led the mare into the birthing shed. In two years he'd be back in the Yuirwood; he couldn't-didn't want to-imagine being anywhere else.

"A pretty girl might catch your eye."

Bro flinched. Shame burned for a second time, then his anger flared: He'd never look at a human woman. Never. And Shali knew it. She looked at the sky; they were each alone and miserable.

"Momma! Momma! Bro!"

A child's voice broke the silence. Bro and Shali glanced toward the path where Tay-Fay ran as fast as four-year-old legs could carry her. She stumbled as she stopped and avoided a fall only by lunging for Bro's knees. The bowl speckled all three of them with cold porridge and laughter. Bro shook his head dramatically, then swung his sister into his lap.

"What's the matter, Little Leaf?"

Her true name was Taefaeli-Light-through-the-Leaves-a Cha'Tel'Quessir name: Adentir did understand, better than Rizcarn would have understood were the situation reversed. But Taefaeli knew nothing of the forest. She called herself Tay-Fay and hadn't yet noticed that she didn't look like her mother or brother.

Tay-Fay gasped for breath. "Poppa says come quick. To the shed. The momma-horse-"

Bro pushed his sister off with a kiss on the forehead. Tay-Fay whimpered as he stood and threatened worse until he picked her up. She was spoiled, human, and a thorough pest; no Cha'Tel'Quessir tree-family would have put up with her. She fought when he passed her to Shali.

"Later, Little Leaf. I'll take you to the bank above the stream. You can pick flowers, pinks for the mare, yellow-bud for the foal."

Her sniffles became a grin that Bro returned effortlessly. He couldn't explain the joy he felt when she smiled, but Tay-Fay was the reason he hadn't left Sulalk yet and the only reason he might still be here two years hence.

Adentir greeted Bro with a grunt and a gesture toward the straw sheaves heaped against the wall. With no other instruction, Bro hauled an armful into the shed. The mare ignored him until he got the straw spread, then she pawed it and tried to lie down.

"Hold her standing while I tie up her tail," Dent said. "Keep her calm. You know best."

Bro did. Five years ago, Dent would have held the mare while Bro did the chores; now Dent wrapped the mare's tail in a tattered length of cloth while Bro stroked her head. In the Yuirwood, the Cha'Tel'Quessir were hunters and, for their own sakes, they quenched the innate rapport they felt with wildlife. It was different on a farm-harder in some ways because, in the end, farmers were hunters, too. But before the end, farmers needed rapport with their animals.

"Good, Bro… good. Let her down now, if she's ready. Keep her calm. That's good, Bro."

They worked together well enough at times like this, and Dent was careful to praise his wife's son, which wasn't, in truth, something Rizcarn had done very often. And maybe that was the root of Bro's problems: It wasn't easy to be around Dent without feeling disloyal to his father. The only way he could balance the guilt was with rudeness.

Not that guilt or rudeness mattered right then. The mare had foaled before. She tolerated men's hands because they'd always been on her. Straining, resting, then straining again she birthed her foal while Bro whispered gentleness in her ear.

"Got yourself a colt-foal, Bro," Dent exclaimed when the birth was well underway.

Bro and the mare sighed together, but there'd never been any doubt, not in Bro's mind.

When the mare was standing again, Bro joined his stepfather in the doorway. The mare whuffled her acceptance of this offspring, then, in the grip of nameless instinct, she licked the life into him.

"You're a man of property now, Bro," Dent said, a bit too casually, as the colt thrust a spindly leg forward, tested its strength and collapsed. "Time to start thinking of your future. Gudnor's widow-sister has come to keep house for him, now that his wife's gone. She's got two daughters, dowered by their dead father and both unspoken for. Be a good time for you to make yourself useful to Gudnor. I give you leave."

Bro ignored him; his future most emphatically did not include Gudnor's sisters, regardless of their dowries. The silence grew thick, until Dent cut it again.

"I've never seen that color before, all fog and twilight. Old Erom's stud-horse throws blacks and bays, regular as rain, but in all my days, Bro, I've never seen a twilight horse."

There was a challenge in Dent's words, for all they were soft-spoken. Unafraid, Bro met his stepfather's eyes. "I took her-" he admitted, an admission he'd made before and that had resulted in his one beating at Dent's hands. "I rode her to the Yuirwood and back again. We met no one, man or beast. If Erom's stud-horse didn't sire her foal, I don't know what did."

The words weren't lies, but they weren't true, either, and Dent was wise enough to ken the subtle differences.

"You're a man now, Bro. No good comes from the lies a man tells or the secrets he keeps from his kin."

You're not my kin! Those were the words battling for Bro's tongue. In the beginning, when Shali first came to Sulalk to keep house for another man, Bro had thought Adentir was a lack-wit. He knew better now: Dent was a simple man, simple in the way that good, honest men were often simple, simple in a way no son of Rizcarn Golden-Moss could imitate or defeat.

With the sounds of the mare and foal behind him, Bro saw his stepfather as his mother saw him: as different from Rizcarn as night was from day.

Probably, Dent would understand. Probably, Dent would light his pipe and listen to anything Bro might say about his father. For all their disdain, villagers were insatiably curious about the Yuirwood and the Cha'Tel'Quessir. Possibly, with a pinch of effort, Bro could have reconciled himself to his mother's second husband, to Sulalk and farming, to the pure humanity that lay generations deep in his heritage.

But because reconciliation might have been possible, Bro maintained an arrogance that masked, however inadequately, both loneliness and fear. He strode away from the shed, from his stepfather and the twilight colt.

"Will you be back?" Dent called after him. "What do I tell your mother?"

Bro hunched his shoulders and kept walking. He'd be back; for two more years he'd be back, training his colt. Then he'd be in the Yuirwood where, if he were lucky, he'd never see the naked sky again.

He'd been back just once, when he stole the mare. Driven by a persistent dream in which he'd seen the trees and heard his father's voice, Bro had ridden her to the forest edge, just as he'd confessed. He'd arrived at twilight, beneath a full moon. A deep-wood wind blew from the trees. A sign, he'd thought: an invitation to put farms and human farmers behind him. He pointed the mare into the Yuirwood, felt the dappled moonlight on his skin-or imagined he could. Come morning, though, he was back in the meadow beside a flock of sheep.

The Yuirwood had rejected him.

With no one to watch or care, Bro had crumpled into the dewy grass. He'd wept himself sick: his dream had been mere delusion or, worse, deliberate deception; he could hear his father's laughter in the morning breeze.

Bro had ridden the mare back to Sulalk. Where else could he go if the forest wouldn't have him? He'd admitted his folly and taken his punishment: four strokes for thievery, another three for deceit. He'd tried to hate the man wielding the short whip, but there were tears in Dent's eyes.

Winter had been cold and dreamless but lately, as the birthing season approached, Bro had begun to dream again. He'd seen the mare's foal, a twilight colt of the Yuirwood.

When the birthing shed and Dent's hurt-puzzled face were behind him, Bro settled against one of the great trees that still grew here and there in the farmland, sentries of the vanished Yuirwood. He closed his eyes and opened his thoughts to Relkath Many-Branched, as Rizcarn had taught him to do.

Relkath was Lord of Trees, Godhead of the Yuirwood and buried so deep in time and memory that listening for his voice was like listening for the splash of a single raindrop during a summer storm.

If no one listens, Rizcarn had said, why should Relkath Many-Limbed ever talk to us again? If enough of the Cha'Tel'Quessir listen-truly listen-he'll hear our faith.

Bro remembered his father's words better than he remembered his voice or his face. He could summon Rizcarn's particulars: his deep, mottled, copper-green skin, raven hair, even darker eyes, and flashing, ivory teeth. His laughter, always faintly mocking, even at the last, when Rizcarn had balanced on the tree limb, chiding everyone for clumsiness a moment before he slipped and crashed headfirst onto the hard ground.

Bro could see that image-his father, facedown, limp, lifeless and odd-angled-but try as he might, Bro couldn't fit the living pieces together.

When Shali first brought him to Sulalk, Bro had come to this tree to grieve. He'd grown too old for tears. Today, as it had been for at least two years, he was simply numb and empty, thinking nothing, until there were voices and laughter coming along the path. Bro recognized one of the voices: Varnnet, a farmer's son a few years older than him; the other voice belonged to a stranger, a woman, one of Gudnor's eligible nieces.

Bro made himself small in the tree's shadow. He'd tangled with Varnnet a few times and never come out the victor. It would be worse if Varnnet thought there was a woman at stake. Bro told anyone who asked that the Sulalk women didn't stir him in the least, but that was another lie. His heart leapt to the sound of a woman's laughter, the sway of her skirt as she walked past.

"You're growing up, Ember," Shali had said when he first confessed his wayward thoughts. "Soon the girls will notice you and you'll be breaking hearts until you fall in love yourself. I'll lose my son to another woman!"

Her conclusions frightened Bro as few things frightened him: he'd become a stranger in his own body and his mother laughed! It was better now, or he'd grown more accustomed to the way his idle thoughts slewed. Bro drew his knees up to his chin and wrapped his arms around his ankles as the merrymaking voices came closer.

Walk on by, he thought, squeezing his eyes shut, as if his thoughts were wishes. I'm ignoring you, not looking at you at all, there's no reason for you to see me. Why did I come to this tree? It's too close to the path to Gudnor's farm.

As Bro's luck would have it, they stopped on the tree's other side. The woman's light, musical voice was enough to drive Bro mad, especially when he felt the fringes of her skirt brush lightly against his arm. Varnnet, surely, was standing nearby, fists cocked, waiting to pound a luckless Cha'Tel'Quessir rival. Bro gritted his teeth till his jaw ached. His pulse was loud enough to drown out the laughter.

"Zandilar!"

That was her voice, her name, her breath on the back of Bro's neck, teasing him while Varnnet flexed his muscles. Desperate, Bro flailed an arm, expecting disaster, finding only air beside him.

"Leave me alone! Gods curse on you-"

He opened his eyes. There was no one nearby: no dancing girl, no bully waiting with his fists. The humans had passed. The laughter-Bro still heard laughter-came from elsewhere.

"Zandilar!"

The name reminded him of the Yuirwood and nights with his father, but he couldn't place it precisely.

"Fine, young man, come dance with me!"

Locks of Bro's hair twisted on his neck and a touch soft as feathers, warm as life, caressed his arm. Bro clutched the cuff of his boot before he sprang to his feet. There was a knife-a dark-steel Cha'Tel'Quessir knife-in his hand when he stood, wary of an enemy he could feel, but not see.

"Fine, silly, young man! Come dance with Zandilar!"

He saw her then, hovering above the grass: a slender apparition in silver and gold. Cloaked in dazzling light, the apparition had no sex nor race, but her laugh was feminine, as was her manner. She sat astride a twilight horse whose black legs disappeared in its shadow.

A golden arm stretched out to trace the angle of his cheek; Bro's knees weakened. He staggered backward into the tree, dropping his knife as well. Her laughter shook the tree. Leaves brushed Bro's face as they floated down.

"Come dance with Zandilar in the Yuirwood, fine young man. Come when you're ready. I'll wait for you in the Sunglade!"

Zandilar spoke the Cha'Tel'Quessir dialect with a lilting accent as if ordinary words were a magical melody. When she wheeled the twilight stallion and galloped south, toward the Yuirwood, Bro yearned to follow her, but after three strides, they simply vanished.

"Sunglade," Bro whispered Zandilar's parting word. He'd never visited the Sunglade, but Rizcarn had spoken of it in reverent tones: the oldest stone circle in the Yuirwood, older than the Cha'Tel'Quessir, built by the Yuir, the wild and full-blooded Sy-Tel'Quessir from whom Bro and all his scattered kin claimed descent.

The youth's pulse quieted. His hand was steady when he slipped the fallen knife into the boot sheath. There was no more reason to be frightened. He'd fallen in love, just as Shali predicted, and he'd dance with Zandilar when the twilight colt could carry him to the Sunglade-in two years, just as he'd planned. With Zandilar shimmering in his memory, no human girl would tempt him to break faith with the Cha'Tel'Quessir. With Zandilar waiting in the Sunglade, the next two years would be tortuously slow, but when they'd passed, he and the twilight colt, Zandilar's Dancer-the name appeared suddenly in Bro's mind-would be ready.

Hours past midnight, in a distant part of Faerun-in Shadowdale, to be precise-in the privy chambers of the mage, Elminster, to be absolutely accurate-a silver-haired woman sat bolt-upright in bed.

"Zandilar?" she muttered, cross-grained and clutching a corner of the mage's linen. "Zandilar's dancer?"

Nearby, the great mage tidied his abundant beard. "What disturbs you, Alassra?" He laid a gently restraining hand on her forearm, deterring her from the shape-shifting magic that was her reflex response to unmeasured danger.

"Zandilar. The name came to me in a dream from Aglarond."

No surprise there. These days, Alassra Shentrantra, Chosen of Mystra, was better known as the Simbul, the storm queen of Aglarond, and she took her ruling responsibilities seriously. Little in Aglarond passed beneath her knowledge. If Zandilar had penetrated Alassra's rest here in Shadowdale, then Zandilar was important. Elminster racked his prodigious memory for answers to questions that would almost certainly be asked.

"A god, I think," Alassra muttered.

"A goddess, Zandilar the Dancer," the Old Mage corrected. "Once of the Sy-Tel'Quessir in the Yuirwood."

The silver hair shimmered as Alassra nodded. "There's a stone in the Sunglade that bears her name-one of the smaller stones within the elven Seldarine circle."

Elminster made a light and, in the chamber's northern corner, a brazier came to life beneath a ceramic pot kept filled with water. "You're aware of the rumor that some of the Cha'Tel'Quessir seek to arouse the powers of their distant ancestors?"

Alassra rose from the bed with the singular grace possessed by all seven daughters of Dornal and Elue Shundar. She clothed herself in a gown of plain-woven linen and knelt beside the brazier.

"Of course I'm aware of rumors," she said, her voice sharp, and a reminder, even to Elminster, that the epithet "storm queen" was well deserved. "The Cha'Tel'Quessir have talked about their ancestors as long as humans have groused in the Fang. Discontent is foremost in the Aglarondan nature. That's why I rule there. I don't fear it."

Boiling water rattled the pot's lid. Unmindful of the steam, Alassra stuffed crumpled leaves into a silver-lace basket, then shoved the basket into still-bubbling water. Elminster sat in silence, waiting for the tea's fragrance to calm his beloved friend.

A few moments later, Alassra sipped tea hot enough to scald and sank into a cushioned chair. "Your warning was well-meant. I will see if the Cha'Tel'Quessir malcontents are attached to Zandilar the Dancer. Yet, I tell you, what was said to me was not Zandilar the Dancer, but Zandilar's Dancer and the image, unmistakably, was that of a horse, a foal, in fact, and scarcely a day old."

"Rashemen, perhaps?" Elminster suggested. Alassra had grown up among the Rashemaar witches. Centuries had not dulled the bonds between the horse folk and their adopted daughter. "Surely they would warn you if their seers had scryed something ominous."

But Alassra shook her head before Elminster could pursue his thought further.

"This was an announcement, not a warning. And the messenger was a Cha'Tel'Quessir youth, not quite grown." She wrinkled her brow. "His mother calls him Ember. He means to dance with her, with Zandilar-or the horse." She smiled and shook her head. "He's young still; his thoughts shift before they're complete."

Elminster stifled his own smile, remembering a time when he was younger and the ever-shifting thoughts of Elue Shundar's daughters confounded every mage in Faerun.

Again, Alassra interrupted Elminster's thoughts. "It is odd, isn't it, El-to combine horses and the Yuirwood powers in a single thought? A forest is hardly the place where I'd look for horses."

"Nowadays," Elminster agreed, reaching into one of his robe's many pockets and drawing out the briar-thorn pipe that nestled there. Sparks flew and scents as delicate as Alassra's tea mingled in the air. "There was a time, though… Faerun was a colder, wetter place, stamped with great trees the likes of which-well, a few remain in the groves around your sister's Silverymoon, but of what remains of that primal forest, most of it is in your beloved Aglarond, deep in the Yuirwood."

Alassra arched an eyebrow many shades darker than her hair. "And horses? I suppose you're going to tell me that herds of horses ran freely in this primal forest."

"As freely as any creature that size can run between the trees. As freely, at least, as a great hart."

"And herds, El-were there herds of forest horses in the time before you and I?"

Elminster shrugged, knowing that Alassra was baiting him. "Small herds, I should think. Narrow, certainly. Easier to fit between the trees and the hunters."

"Oh-hunters? Bears, wolves and panthers, or creatures more exotic?"

"Men, Alassra," the bearded mage said, growing suddenly serious. "There were men in Faerun's forest."

"And women?"

She'd missed his change in tone, a rare mistake and a certain sign that the midnight image disturbed her more than she wished to admit.

"Men and women, yes. Living their lives, worshiping their gods-none of whom are remembered."

Alassra poured herself another cup of tea. "Except by you?" She'd sensed the change now, but resisted it. Her baiting turned brittle, bitter.

"I know nothing about them, dear friend, except that they-the hunters and their gods-existed in that part of the primal Faerun forest that the Yuir elves would eventually claim for themselves. There those elves would erect two stone circles, one inside the other, one inscribed with Seldarine names and the other with names that are, as you, yourself said, at best, half-forgotten."

"The Cha'Tel'Quessir? Say it outright, El: There are Cha'Tel'Quessir who've never reconciled to human rule in Aglarond. They wish to see every human man, woman, and child put in boats and sailed toward the sunset. They'd like to raise the ancient Yuir powers toward that aim, but they won't act on their wish, not while the zulkirs and tharchions of Thay lick their chops just across Aglarond's border."

"If they've only got one wish, Alassra. I doubt that they do. Oh, maybe some of them, the Cha'Tel'Quessir are no more immune to short sight than the rest of us…"

Alassra scowled. Her eyes began to glow with sapphire light. Elminster ignored the warning. In all of Faerun, but especially in his privy chambers, he was the best equipped to weather the storm queen's tantrums.

"But the Cha'Tel'Quessir aren't like any other race-"

"They aren't a race! They're half-elves!"

"Precisely, but tell that to them. Nowhere in Faerun, nowhere on all Toril, is there a place where half-elves look at both their children and their parents and see folk like themselves. Nowhere… except in the Yuirwood."

The deep blue fire faded from Alassra's eyes. "My mother," she whispered. Elue Shundar had been a half-elf, the child of an elf and human pairing. Alassra and her sisters, of course, took after their human father. "She never saw herself in the ones she loved."

Elminster set down his pipe. In his determination to enlighten his friend, he'd forgotten Elue Shundar, who'd faced the very fate the Cha'Tel'Quessir sought to avoid. He stood behind Alassra's chair, gently kneading her shoulders, offering solace without looking at her troubled face.

Many long moments later, Alassra began to speak softly. "The Cha'Tel'Quessir are looking beyond the Seldarine, back to that primal forest, for gods that they can make them their own." She sighed; the tension drained from her. "Can they? Can Zandilar the Dancer be a horse-hunter's goddess?"

"Someone thinks so," Elminster replied, returning to his chair and his pipe. "Your Ember, maybe. Maybe Zandilar herself. Not the horse, I should think, but Zandilar's Dancer bears close watching. Let me know what you learn. My books are ever at your disposal, my memory and my company as well."

"I mean to take advantage of all three."

"Good… Excellent. Now, breakfast, dear friend, or back to bed?"